Lectures :: ECE 445 - Senior Design Laboratory

Lectures

Spring 2024 Lecture Material:

 

Pre-Lecture #1:


(before the first lecture)

 

 

Brainstorming and Ideation

  • Brainstorming and Ideation slides (pptx)
  • Videos (watch before coming to class)

 

 

Lecture #1:


(January 16th)

 

 

Getting Started

  • Welcome, Course Overview, and Request for Approval (link)
  • Conflict Management Workshop (link)
  • Pitches
    • Sound Asleep (link) – Maggie Li (mtli2@illinois.edu)
    • AUVI- Continuous Fistula Monitor (link) – Richie Li (rlli4@illinois.edu)
    • Custom Cameras and Sensors for Medical Applications (link) – Professor Viktor Gruev (vgruev@illinois.edu)
    • Custom NIR and Visible Light LEDs for Surgery (link) – Professor Viktor Gruev (vgruev@illinois.edu)
    • Autonomous Underwater Drone (link) – Professor Viktor Gruev (vgruev@illinois.edu)
  • Brainstorming

 

 

Pre-Lecture #2:


(before the second lecture)

 

 

Beyond Ideation

 

 

Lecture #2:


(January 23rd)

 

 

Moving Forward

  • Introduction
  • Current Sensing for Electric Vehicles(link) Professor Olga Mironenko (olgamiro@illinois.edu)
  • Machine Shop – Gregg Bennett (gbenntt@illinois.edu)
  • Pitches
    • Autonomous Sailboat (link) – Professor Arne Fliflet (afliflet@illinois.edu)
    • The Watt Balance (link) – Daniella Pope (ddpope2@illinois.edu)
    • GPS Tags for Bat Conservation(link) – Josie Hoppenworth (jch8@illinois.edu)
    • ECEB Submetering(link) – Professor Jonathan Schuh (schuh4@illinois.edu)
  • Senior Design and Lab Safety (link) – Casey Smith (cjsmith0@illinois.edu)
  • PCB Tips (link)

 

Pre-Lecture #3:


(before the third lecture)

 

 

Design and Writing Tips

 

 

Lecture #3:

(January 30th)

 

 

Last Stop Before RFA

  • Intellectual Property – Dr. Michelle Chitambar (mchitamb@illinois.edu) (link)
  • Writing Center – Dr. Aaron Geiger (ageiger2@illinois.edu) (link)
  • Ethics (link)
  • Lionfish Trap project pitch – Katharine Klugman (klugman3@illinois.edu) (link)
  • Lab Notebook (link)
  • Modular Design (link)
  • R&V Table (link)
  • Proposal (link)
  • Design Review (link)

Spring 2023 Video Lectures:

Brainstorming

Finding a Problem (Video)
Generating Solutions (Video)
Diving Deeper (Video)
Voting (Video)
Reverse Brainstorming (Video)
Homework for Everyone (Video)

Important Information

Using the ECE 445 Website (Video)
Lab Notebook (Video , Slides)
Modular Design (Video, Slides)
Circuit Tips and Debugging (Video , Slides)
Eagle CAD Tutorial (Video)
Spring 2018 IEEE Eagle Workshop (Slides)
Spring 2018 IEEE Soldering Workshop (Slides)

Major Assignments and Milestones

Request for Approval (Video, Slides)
Project Proposal (Video, slides)
Design Document (Video, slides)
Design Review (Video, slides)
Writing Tips (Video, slides)

Amphibious Spherical Explorer

Kaiwen Chen, Junhao Su, Zhong Tan

Amphibious Spherical Explorer

Featured Project

The amphibious spherical explorer (ASE) is a spherical robot for home monitoring, outdoor adventure or hazardous environment surveillance. Due to the unique shape of the robot, ASE can travel across land, dessert, swamp or even water by itself, or be casted by other devices (e.g. slingshot) to the mission area. ASE has a motion-sensing system based on Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and rotary magnetic encoder, which allows the internal controller to adjust its speed and attitude properly. The well-designed control system makes the robot free of visible wobbliness when it is taking actions like acceleration, deceleration, turning and rest. ASE is also a platform for research on control system design. The parameters of the internal controller can be assigned by an external control panel in computer based on MATLAB Graphic User Interface (GUI) which communicates with the robot via a WiFi network generated by the robot. The response of the robot can be recorded and sent back to the control panel for further analysis. This project is completely open-sourced. People who are interested in the robot can continue this project for more interesting features, such as adding camera for real-time surveillance, or controller design based on machine learning.

Project Videos